Brian Ward, a British professor of American Studies, will present a lecture on how Southern rock music influenced Britain’s view of the American South at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 30, at the Central Arkansas Library’s Darragh Center at 100 Rock St.

The lecture is co-sponsored by the UALR History Department’s Mabel W. Formica and Santo D. Formica Endowment Speaker Series in association with The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, a department of the Central Arkansas Library System.

A book signing and reception will follow the presentation.  The program is free and open to the public. Seating is open, and reservations are requested but not required. RSVP to lblackwell@cals.org or 501-918-3029. For more information contact Susan Hill Gelé at 501-918-3086.

Ward, a professor at Northumbria University in northeast England, will discuss some of the reasons for the unlikely popularity of such bands as the Allman Brothers, Black Oak Arkansas, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Arkansan Leon Helms’ The Band during the early 1970s in Britain.

His lecture is titled “Don’t Believe in Taxes or Policemen, The Strange Career of Jim Dandy and Southern Rock in 1970s Britain. He is the author of  “Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues,” “Black Consciousness and Race Relations,” and “Radio and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South.”